


catching moments (those fleeting moments of humanity)

by Andromicat



Category: Purple Hyacinth - Ephemerys & Sophism (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Flashbacks, Gen, Help, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Introspection, Memories, Missing Scene, Moving On, Pining, Platonic Pining, Soft-ish, a lot of thinking involved, angsty, bye, eh i mean he deserved the ass kicking, excessively beta read, for five days straight, have fun reading, hmmm yes anime philosophical thoughts, hopefully not, i don’t know how to write platonic though, i think i’ll go now, it’s not supposed to be romantic, kieran can’t catch a break, like the crap your lit teacher makes you overanalyze, lowkey simp kieran but again it’s supposed to be platonic, more italics overuse, more lit device overuse, probably, probably sounds pretentious af, rip him, sanity deleted, so i might have screwed up, soft, sorry - Freeform, the tags are getting really long, too much figurative language, too much symbolism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:40:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,128
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25845958
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Andromicat/pseuds/Andromicat
Summary: There’s a time so long ago that when Kieran remembers it, it seems almost like a daydream. A passing moment so faint, so bright, that it’s almost false. He remembers the days when he stared into the mirror and a wide-eyed child stared back, a child with a rosy view of the world and so muchhope. So muchlife.“Have you ever felt that tinge of warmth when you see those subtle moments in life that remind you that humanity can be beautiful?”“That sense of humanity. I don’t ever want to lose it.”Oh, how it has all crumbled like sandcastles in his bloodstained hands.(Kieran catches fleeting moments in time. Chief among them: the elusive smile of a certain red-haired officer.)
Relationships: Lauren Sinclair & Kieran White
Comments: 8
Kudos: 46





	catching moments (those fleeting moments of humanity)

**Author's Note:**

> **THIS IS YOUR FIRST AND ONLY WARNING. THIS FANFIC CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 54 (THE MOST RECENT FREE EPISODE OF PURPLE HYACINTH AS OF THIS POSTING). IF YOU HAVE NOT READ EPISODE 54, I _STRONGLY_ URGE YOU (MORE LIKE _MANDATE_ ) TO READ THAT BEFOREHAND!**  
>    
> ~~oml what’s this did arcktick actually write something and not go on pseudo-hiatus for 2 straight months? preposterous~~
> 
> Aight, the actual fic at hand.  
> Yes, I fastpass PH. And after 54 destroyed everyone (and turned the entire fandom against chairs), I really wanted to write a fic that had at least something to do with what happened in it. So I looked through the episode, and a couple weeks ago, I decided on it: Kieran’s sketch of Lauren from episode 32. Him sketching her is a little missing scene that I wanted to see, so I guess I took it upon myself to write it. And here we are!  
> I hope this doesn’t open _too many_ wounds from that episode—
> 
> Thank you to my geniuse and rather unfortunate long-suffering go-to beta, [GingerBeer42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerBeer42/), for assisting with pouring water on the dumpster fire of a first draft! The comments we collectively left on the document...dear lord, it’s a _mess_. Thank you for…tolerating the snarky ass 3 am comments. And the snarky ass 3 am replies. NOW GO READ HER FICS.  
> Also, thank you to [beautifuldisgrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifuldisgrace/) and [intheknickoftime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intheknickoftime/) for being my betas for this fic, catching all the smal braine 3 am errors, and providing some epick feedback!  
>  _ ~~i seem to have an obsession with 3 am~~_  
>  PLEASE DON’T QUESTION THE INANE AMOUNTS OF BETA READING I STUCK THIS FIC THROUGH
> 
> OKAY!! THAT’S ENOUGH RAMBLING!! *ties fingers together* If only I could write fics this fast.
> 
> Enjoy, I guess? I’ll see you on the other side.

There’s a time so long ago that, when Kieran remembers it, it seems almost like a daydream. A passing moment so faint, so bright, that it’s almost false. He remembers the days when he looked into the mirror and a wide-eyed child stared back, a child with a rosy, untainted image of the world and so much _hope_. So much _life_.

_“Have you ever felt that tinge of warmth when you see those subtle moments in life that remind you that humanity can be beautiful?”_

_“That sense of humanity. I don’t ever want to lose it.”_

Oh, how it has all crumbled like sandcastles in his bloodstained hands.

~~~

_What should I draw today?_

He sifts through his memories of the day, sorting, watching, until a clear image flickers steadily in his mind. He raises his pencil and brings it to paper, and through broad strokes on empty white, he breathes life into where there was none. Shapes, bodies, faces emerge, coming alive before his eyes.

The pencil drops from his outstretched fingertips, striking the table with a faint _thunk_ as he lifts the paper, inspecting his sketch. Thin gray lines dance and flow across the page, giving shape, giving form, to the little moments of humanity he captures in time. 

He turns, clutching the page, preparing to add it to his stack of sketches, when something on the wall catches his eye.

_Lauren._

From the unassuming spot her sketch occupies on the wall, her face stares up at him in steady lines of charcoal and graphite. He blinks, and suddenly in the grayscale she comes alive. He visualizes the warm golden glimmer in her eyes, the auburn sweep of her hair, the pale cream of the scarf around her neck. Her smile is faint, but her face illuminates in its presence, setting off a flicker of warmth in his chest, even from the pale imitation he has crafted.

If only they were back in that time. When everything was _simpler_. Before the storm of her rage and his regrets, before the world burned at their feet _—_

_If only…_

* * *

_1 week prior_

Tonight, the blue-gray hues of dusk color them in gentle washes of fading light. From their perches on the bridge, distant city lights glimmer, little spots of light so near and yet so far away. In the near-winter air, their breath steams and drifts away in graceful curls of fading smoke, their soft voices carried by the sigh of the evening breeze. 

Someone has died in the 11th precinct today. A fellow officer named Harvey found dead in their own office with no trace of his killer past their rather expensive signature: golden viper venom. 

Several suspects come to mind, chief among them a woman with sweeping powder-pink hair and stunning amber eyes. Belladonna Davenport. The Golden Viper. She possesses the silence, the stealth to drift into their precinct and out without the faintest trace. She has the deadliness and the accuracy of her namesake, and her blade is imbued with the same fatal poison Harvey died from. She is as capable, as venomous as they come.

“I wish I could find the assassin who did this to Harvey,” Lauren positively _growls_ , “and send him to rot in jail.” 

_The assassin who’d killed him._ How carelessly she volleys her words to him, how they slip off her tongue with ease, without awareness. It’s almost as if she’s forgotten that the man standing before her has taken countless lives, just as Harvey’s killer undeniably has. Almost as if—as if she doesn’t realize that _he_ could have been the one to end his life— 

_“Ascend the tower. Find and kill all of Lune’s convicts. Don’t let anything get in your way.”_

_“Yes, of course. It is an honor to serve the Leader.”_

Ah. He can never escape his duty, can he? 

The memory stings, pierces through his mind like a slashing blade, a reminder of his place, his identity: a monster, a heartless killer who has claimed hundreds of lives. He can try, try and swallow the guilt, subdue the memories of scarlet rivers and a man standing in darkness blacker than black, but it lurks in the shadowed corners of his mind, waiting patiently for its inevitable return. No, it will not let him forget. He can _never_ forget. And no one will _ever_ forgive.

But for all his efforts, he can’t bring himself to tell her. She can’t know, but she _will_ soon enough, but—

If she knew, she’d hate him, she’d never forgive him. She’d _leave._

He doesn’t want her to leave.

Is it selfish of him to desire a few more days of peace? To yearn, desperately, for the smallest shred of her trust, if only for one instant? _Yes, it is_ . He knows it is, and yet he longs for it nevertheless. He is a selfish and desperate man who reaches for the sun, even though he _knows_ he will burn. For that distant hope, the faintest hope of glory, he will burn, and the world will burn before him, and she will be forever lost. 

It doesn’t matter, though, because he reaches for it anyway. It doesn’t matter if he burns. It doesn’t, _it doesn’t._

 _Keep telling yourself that,_ a cynical part of him says. 

“I could’ve been the one to kill Harvey, you know that?” he finally says, his gaze averting from the glimmer of her searching eyes. Too fearful of what is painted on her face, a snake of trepidation winds its way around his chest, constricting him in its merciless grasp. “What would you have done?” 

She whirls around, eyes wide with shock, and he forces himself to level his head and meet her gaze. A thousand words scream in the depths of her eyes, but she glances away, mouth pressed shut, until slowly but surely, a shadow of determination drifts across her face. The fierce blaze of her golden eyes cuts through him again, burning, stinging like needles against his skin.

The ferocity of her next words stuns him.

“ _I would’ve killed you._ ”

Her morals remain intact, he sees, unlike him, his shattered conscience. How firm she is, how strongly she stands—oh, how he wishes he had her _conviction._ Her barely-hidden anger bubbling just below the surface, her undying quest for justice.

He laughs, genuinely, his head tilting back _._ Relief sparks suddenly in her gaze, and he smiles reassuringly. “At least you’re clear, officer,” he says. “I suppose I wouldn’t expect less of you.”

“Do you have any idea who it could be?” she asks then, a wisp of hope drifting through the edges of her soft voice.

“I have my suspicions, although I’m not sure of anything,” he replies. With such an expensive poison—it must’ve been someone high-ranked, valued. Belladonna, perhaps, or someone of similar status. But it wouldn’t take too much for him to find who, and he’s willing to look. He’ll do it for her.

“I can find the person who did it for you,” he whispers. It is a promise, a pledge to her, and it is unbreaking, unyielding in its strength. It holds, stands strong and never falls even in the strongest winds, the strongest storms. Adamantine, unbreakable.

For the briefest moment, time stills under the dimming blue light. Once more, an officer and an assassin meet on the bridge, their souls intertwined by fate itself. They meet and their unity is fire and ice, shadows and moonlight, and yet neither melts and neither dims. No, they are _stronger_ together. Brighter. They rise, twin spirits glimmering like stars in the deep night, twin beacons rising into the far reaches of the sky.

She smiles.

And it is in that moment, suspended in time, that warmth blooms in his heart again.

~~~

Her smile lingers in his mind long after their rendezvous concludes. Because for a moment again, that tinge of warmth—that _humanity_ —had reawakened from its deep slumber, wrapping him in its gentle embrace. That spark of gratitude had warmed his frosted heart, and for a passing second, he felt something warm _,_ something _bright_ again, and it made him feel _alive._

His pencil drifts to the blank sheet of paper, and almost unconsciously, it traverses the page, sketching that fleeting moment he’d caught between the webs of time. Shimmering gray lines form shapes and features, and slowly, a face emerges from the white.

He cannot deny that something is changing. 

The ground shifts under Kieran’s feet, slowly, surely. Something in his heart is opening, deep within the maze, the towering castle of his impenetrable walls. A tiny crack of light peeks out from the barred door, and it seeps through his barriers slowly, little drops of feeling, tiny gleams of truth. They collect, pools and shards of emotion, fragments of the man he is, the boy he once was.

It’s all because of her. Because for that one exhilarating moment in that moonlit alley, his humanity had returned to him, and for the first time in years, he’d felt truly _alive._ He was a shade, an empty shell of someone barely human, and yet in that instant, his hesitation set his soul alight, and he truly _felt_ again. 

And now, in that moment on the bridge. It isn’t hesitation that momentarily illuminates him this time—it is his promise, her faint, drifting smile of appreciation. _Gratitude._ And yet, all the same, he feels that same creeping of warmth somewhere in his soul, if only for a heartbeat. 

It is that feeling he has lost for years. _Humanity—_ its eyes crack open; it stands and spreads its wings, scattering pieces of light through pitch-black night, and slowly, the ruthless monster that has dominated him for years retreats.

The empty numbness, the hollow cry in his chest, dulls and weakens. He’d so truly thought he was lost in the darkness, but a distant twinkle, a lighthouse beyond the horizon, had winked alight that night. Now, little by little, piece by piece, he is baring himself to her: his mind, his heart, his soul. And now, that tiny glimmer of childish hope, long faded, once again shines deep in his heart. 

For so long he’s wondered—is someone like him human? _Can_ he be? And on that night the answer fell on him like shards of starlight from the heavens. That moment their eyes met under the silver moonlight, that moment his sword froze and his breath caught in his throat. _Yes,_ a lost fragment of him whispers, and for a stirring moment, his world illuminates. _Yes, you are._

The humanity he captures so religiously on paper still kindles in his heart, still flickers, undying even in the scarlet rain.

He owes a lot to her, he supposes.

He lifts his pencil, glancing down at his sketch. Her face, her _smile,_ looks back up at him, delicate features etched in sweeping, fluid lines on ivory paper, almost alive. He can almost _see_ her on the bridge again, face haloed in soft dusky light, as he whispers a promise to her.

Caught in that frozen moment on the bridge, her smile burrows deep into his heart, gathering in his mind, never to be forgotten.

A shadow of a man poised under faint rays of moonlight, he allows himself a faint smile.

* * *

_Present day_

These little moments of time, these drifting pictures of life, stay eternally captured in graphite on his wall. There is her fleeting smile, the moonlit alley, every moment that ignited him, made him feel _alive_.

He sighs, his gaze drifting from her face, the _almost-there_ glint of her golden eyes, as he adds his sketch to the growing pile on his desk. Seated on his chair, he glances up through the window. The moon shines brightly, almost—almost like that fateful night when they met, when he was pulled out of the frigid water for a rousing moment—

Will he ever feel it again? The warmth, the _humanity?_ Those pieces of the boy he once was, that he has guarded in the depths of his soul—will they ever surface again? 

No. Those fragments are gone. Shattered by that storm, her screaming, his unbridled rage, the feel of her _cold_ skin against his tightening ha— 

There _is_ no end to this now. Those bright moments—they are gone. He is a raging current in inky darkness, the glimmering fragments of his humanity long lost, washed away by the tide, shattered by the pelting rain.

His humanity has fled from him, lost deep within the regret and horror and _pain_ he harbors in the oceans of his mind. These infinitesimal shards, his soul, his _life_ , have long faded, fluttering from his outstretched fingertips right before his eyes. 

And now, he can only regret.

**Author's Note:**

>  _stares at author's note_ Dear lord this is l o n g.
> 
> ALSO. I swear my next fic will at least partially be from someone else (not Kieran)'s perspective, LOL. (Yes. There will be a next time. Yay?)
> 
> MMmmmmmMM yes. This fandom loves its Kieran sketch fics. Both reading and writing them. I’m just adding to the pile because, well, why not?  
> This really is lowkey simp Kieran, huh. PLATONIC, I SWEAR. If there were any romantic undertones, well,,,I guess it depends on interpretation. I feel that he sees Lauren as someone special, because she’s the only one who has made him feel human in years, and she sees parts of him—parts of his humanity. BUT. I don’t necessarily think that means romantic. And I wrote this fic with that in mind—she is important to him for a variety of reasons, and he doesn’t want her to leave (and yearns for her trust) because she’s the only one who remotely understands him or sees him as human. She’s literally the _only person who knows him at all_.  
> But it’s not romantic in any way. Yet.  
> HAHAHHAHAH—yeah, hopefully Lauki gets a chance to take off in season 2. Only time will tell. Until then, I will feed myself with the many, _many_ Lauki fanfics out there. And the Kywi ones—I love Kywi, they’re so SOFT. And I want to write about them, but I feel I don’t know enough about them to confidently do so. But to all of you out there writing Lauki and Kywi fanfics: YES YES YES THEY’RE ALL REALLY GOOD AND I READ THEM ALL!! AHHHHHHH THENKU IT IS F O O D
> 
> Also. Thank you for all the support y’all gave me after I posted show me your humanity! _(100 KUDOS WHAT THE—? DAMN.)_ You all are what keeps me running. It encouraged me to write more fics, and I appreciate all your comments and kudos! Sorry for the late replies, I genuinely don’t know what to say sometimes. You all are too nice to me, ahhhhh. The community here is immaculate and I love contributing to it! WE SUPPORT EACH OTHER.
> 
> LOL, also, uh—  
> (warning: the following few paragraphs involve a whole lot of unnecessary rambling. Skip to the next break if you don’t wanna read LOL)
> 
> No one:  
> Me, avoiding actual dialogue like the plague:  
>  _Sigh_ , gotta work on that. I really don’t know how to write dialogue, tbh. It’s kinda hard for me to imagine it, I guess? I have to practice. And study interactions and crap. Augh, I don’t mfing know how to write. Side effect of not really writing for 4 years straight, I guess. I have to relearn and learn better.  
> It pains me to say that it legitimately took me 5 days. To write 2k. Thesaurus.com, we worship thee. My authors’ notes are long asf (this one apparently tops 700 words) (yeah i know, what the f—?) and they only take ~30 minutes to write? ~~Why can’t I cross-apply this to creative writing, lmao.~~  
>  You see, I’d really really like to write a longfic for PH sometime, but I simply lack the motivation, dedication, and _speed_. Finishing a project (even if it’s, like, a really small project) is a major accomplishment to me, and it’s something I rarely ever do. Again, I have to work on that, LMAO. Maybe one day.  
> I need to figure out how to be FASTER. (I know how to write faster. By deleting my lit device overuse. But I’m too much of a stubborn lil shit to do that.) Especially if I ever want to write a longfic—or maybe even participate in NaNoWriMo, who knows (not this year. I’m a student and I made the unwise decision to take three too many hardcore classes).  
> I MUST GO FASTER. ALWAYS FASTE—
> 
>  _cough_ Let’s not emulate Sonic the Hedgehog. How the frick I started rambling about my personal goals and issues on the authors’ notes, _I have no idea_ , and tbh, I’m afraid to know.
> 
> Please leave a comment and a kudo if you liked the fic! They are highly appreciated.
> 
> And again, thank you to my betas, [GingerBeer42](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GingerBeer42/), [beautifuldisgrace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beautifuldisgrace/), and [intheknickoftime](https://archiveofourown.org/users/intheknickoftime/)!  
> And here’s [Purple Hyacinth on Webtoon](https://www.webtoons.com/en/mystery/purple-hyacinth/list?title_no=1621) as well as [the official Discord (we’re nice people, we swear. Just look away from the cursed memes and you’ll be fine)](https://discord.gg/MRyCG3).


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